Long Odds

By Kenneth Grahame

FORevery honest reader there exist some half-dozen honest

books, which he re-reads at regular intervals of six months

or thereabouts. Whatever the demands on him, however alarmingthe arrears that gibber and grin in menacing row, for these he

somehow generally manages to find time. Nay, as the years flit

by, the day is only too apt to arrive when he reads no others at

all ;the hour will even come, in certain instances, when the

number falls to five, to four perhaps to three. With this

same stride of time comes another practice too that of formu

lating general principles to account for or excuse one s own line

of action ;and yet it ought not to be necessary to put forward

preface or apology for finding oneself immersed in Treasure Island

for about the twentieth time. The captain s capacities for the

consumption of rum must always be a new delight and surprise ;

the approaching tap of the blind man s stick, the moment of

breathless waiting in the dark and silent inn, are ever sure of their

thrill;hence it came about that the other night I laid down the

familiar book at the end of Part the Second where vice and virtue

spar a moment ere the close grip with the natural if common

place reflection that nineteen to six was good healthy odds.

But somehow I was in no hurry to take the book up again.The

By Kenneth Grahame 79The mental comment with which I had laid it down had set up a

yeasty ferment and a bubble in my brain;

till at last, with a start,

I asked myself how long was it since I had been satisfied withsuch a pitiful majority on the side of evil ? Why, a certain

number of years ago it would have been no majority at all none,at least, worth speaking of. What a change must have been

taking place in me unsuspected all this time, that I could tamelyaccept, as I had just done, this pitiful compromise (I can call it

nothing else) with the base law of probabilities ! What a totally

different person I must have now become, from the hero whosallied out to deal with a horde of painted Indians, armed onlywith his virtue and his unerring smoothbore ! Well, there wassome little comfort in the fact that the fault was not entirely myown, nor even that of the irresistible years.

Frankly, in the days I look back to, this same Treasure Island

would not have gone down at all. It was not that we were in

the least exacting. We did not ask for style ; the evolution of

character possessed no interest whatever for us;and all scenery

and description we sternly skipped. One thing we did insist on

having, and that was good long odds against the hero;and in those

fortunate days we generally got them. Just at present, however,a sort of moral cowardice seems to have set in among writers of

this noblest class of fiction; a truckling to likelihood, and a dirty

regard for statistics. Needless to say, this state of things is

bringing about its inevitable consequence. Already one hears

rumours that the boy of the period, instead of cutting down im

palpable bandits or blowing up imaginary mines and magazines, is

moodily devoting himself to golf. The picture is a pitiful one.

Heaven hath blessed him, this urchin, with a healthy appetite for

pirates, a neat hand at the tomahawk, and a simple passion for

being marooned ; instead of which, he now plods about the country

playing

80 Long Odds

playing golf. The fault is not his, of course;the honest heart of

him beats sound as ever. The real culprits are these defaulting

writers, who, tainted by realism, basely shirk their duty, fall awayfrom the high standard of former days, and endeavour to represent

things as they possibly might have happened. Nineteen to six,

indeed ! No lad of spirit will put up with this sort of thing. Hewill even rather play golf; and play golf he consequently does.

The magnificent demand of youth for odds long odds, what

ever the cost ! has a pathetic side to it, once one is in a position

to look back, thereon squinting gloomily through the wrong end of

the telescope. At the age of six or seven, the boy (in the personof his hero of the hour) can take on a Genie, an Afreet or two, a

few Sultans and a couple of hostile armies, with a calmness re

sembling indifference. At twelve he is already less exacting.Three hundred naked Redskins, mounted on mustangs and yellinglike devils, pursue him across the prairie and completely satisfy his

more modest wants. At fifteen, tis enough if he may only lay his

frigate alongside of two French ships of the line ; and among the

swords he shall subsequently receive on his quarter-deck he will

not look for more than one Admiral s ; while a year or two later

it suffices if he can but win fame and fortune at twenty-five, and

marry the Earl s daughter in the face of a whole competitiveHouse of Lords. Henceforward all is declension. One really has

not the heart to follow him, step by dreary step, to the time whenhe realises that a hero may think himself lucky if he can only hold

his own, and so on to the point when it dawns on him at last that

the gods have a nasty habit of turning the trump, and have even

been accused of playing with loaded dice an aphorism any honest

boy would laugh to scorn.

Indeed, the boy may well be excused for rejecting with indignation these unworthy sneers at the bona fides of the autocrats who,

from

By Kenneth Grahame 8 r

from afar, shift the pieces on this little board, and chuck themaside when done with, one by one. For he but sees the world

without through the chequered lattice of the printed page, and

there invariably the hero, buffeted though he may be of men,kicked by parents and guardians, reviled by colonels and first

lieutenants, always has the trump card up his sleeve, ready for

production in the penultimate chapter. What wonder, then, that the

gods appear to him as his cheerful backers, ready to put their moneyon him whatever the starting price? Nay, even willing to winkand look the other way when he, their darling, gets a quiet lift

from one of themselves, who (perhaps) may" have a bit on ?

"

Meanwhile, to the wistful gazer through the lattice, his cloistral

life begins to irk terribly. Tis full time he was up and doing.

Through the garden gate, beyond the parish common, somewhereover the encircling horizon, lie fame and fortune, and the title

and the bride. Pacific seas are calling, the thunder of their rollers

seems to thrill to him through the solid globe that interposes

between. Savages are growing to dusky manhood solely that he

may flesh his sword on them ; maidens are already entanglingthemselves in perilous situations that he, and he alone, may burst

the bonds, eliminate the dragon, and swing them forth to freedom

and his side. The scarlet sunsets scorn him, a laggard and a

recreant ;behind them lie arrogant cities, plains of peril, and all the

tingling adventure of the sea. The very nights are big with

reproach, in their tame freedom from the watch-fire, the war-

whoop, the stealthy ambuscade ;and every hedgerow is a boundary,

every fence another bond. From this point his decadence dates.

At first the dice spring merrily out on the board. The gods

throw, and he ;and they again, and then he, and still with no

misgivings ;those blacklegs know enough to permit an occasional

win. All the same, early or late, comes that period in the gamewhen

82 Long Odds

when suspicion grows a sickening certainty. He asked for longodds against him, and he has got them with a vengeance ;

the

odds of the loaded dice. While as for that curled darling hedreamed of, who was to sweep the board and declare himself the

chosen, where is he ? He has dropped by the roadside, many a

mile behind. From henceforth on they must not look to join hands

again.Some there are who have the rare courage, at the realising point,

to kick the board over and declare against further play. Stout

hearted ones they, worthy of marble and brass;but you meet them

not at every turn of the way. Such a man I forgathered with

by accident, one late autumn, on the almost deserted Lido. Thebathing-ladders were drawn up, the tramway was under repair ;

but the slant sun was still hot on the crinkled sand, and it was not

so much a case of paddling suggesting itself as of finding oneself

barefoot and paddling without any conscious process of thought.So I paddled along dreamily, and thought of Ulysses, and how he

might have run the prow of his galley up on these very sands, and

sprung ashore and paddled ; and then it was that I met him not

Ulysses, but the instance in point.

He was barelegged also, this elderly man of sixty or thereabouts:

and he had just found a cavallo del mare, and exhibited it with all

the delight of a boy ; and as we wandered together, cool-footed,

eastwards, I learnt by degrees how such a man as this, with the

mark of Cheapside still evident on him, came to be pacing the

sands of the Lido that evening with me. He had been Secretary,it transpired, to some venerable Company or Corporation that

dated from Henry the Seventh;and among his duties, which were

various and engrossing, was in especial that of ticking off, with a

blue pencil, the members of his governing body, as they made their

appearance at their weekly meeting; in accordance with the practice

dating

By Kenneth Grahame 83

dating from Henry the Seventh. His week, as I have said, was a

busy one, and hinged on a Board day ; and as time went on these

Board days raced up and disappeared with an ever-increasing

rapidity, till at last his life seemed to consist of but fifty-two daysin the year all Board days. And eternally he seemed to be tick

ing off names with a feverish blue pencil. These names, too, that

he ticked they flashed into sight and vanished with the same

nightmare gallop ; the whole business was a great hummingZoetrope. Anon the Board would consist of Smith, Brown,Jackson, &c., Life Members all ; in the briefest of spaces Smithwould drop out, and on would come Price, a neophyte a mere

youngling, this Price. A few more Board days flash by, and out

would go Brown and maybe Jackson on would come Cattermole,

Fraser, Davidson beardless juniors every one. Round spun the un

ceasing wheel ; in a twinkling Davidson, the fledgling, sat reverend

in the chair, while as for those others -! And all the time his blue

pencil, with him, its slave, fastened to one end of it, ticked steadily

on. To me, the hearer, it was evident that he must have been

gradually getting into the same state of mind as Rudyard Kipling s

delightful lighthouse keeper, whom solitude and the ceaseless tides

caused to see streaks and lines in all things, till at last he barred a

waterway of the world against the ships that persisted in making the

water streaky. And this may account for an experience of his in

the Underground Railway one evening, when he was travelling homeafter a painful Board day on which he had ticked up three new boysinto vacant places which seemed to have been hardly filled an hour.

He was alone, he said, and rather sleepy, and he hardly looked at

the stranger who got in at one of the stations, until he saw him

deposit in the hat-rack where ordinary people put their umbrellas

what might have been an umbrella, but looked, in the dim light

of the Underground, far more like a scythe. Then he sat up and

began

84 Long Odds

began to take notice. The elderly stranger for he was both

gaunt and elderly nay, as he looked at him longer he saw he wasold oh so very old ! And one long white tuft of hair hung downon his wrinkled forehead from under his top hat, the stranger

squatted on the seat opposite him, produced a note-book and a pencil a blue pencil too! and leaning forward, with a fiendish grin,

said," Now I m going to tick off all you fellows all you Secre

taries right back from the days of Henry the Seventh !

"

The Secretary fell back helplessly in his seat. Terror-stricken,he strove to close his ears against the raucous voice that was already

rattling off those quaint old Tudor names he remembered havingread on yellowing parchment ; but all was of no avail. The

stranger went steadily on, and each name as read was ruthlessly

scored out by the unerring blue pencil. The pace was tremendous.

Already they were in the Commonwealth ; past flew the Restora

tion like a racehorse the blue pencil wagged steadily like a nightmare Queen Anne and her coffee-houses, in a second they were

left far behind ; and as they turned the corner and sped down the

straight of the Georgian era, the Secretary sweated, a doomed man.

The gracious reign of Victoria was full in sight nay, on the

stranger s lips was hovering the very name of Fladgate Fladgatewhom the Secretary could himself just remember, a doddering old

pensioner when the train shivered and squealed into St. James s

Park Station. The Secretary flung the door open and fled like a

hare, though it was not his right station. He ran as far as the

Park itself, and there on the bridge over the water he halted,

mopped his brow, and gradually recovered his peace of mind. Theevening was pleasant, full of light and laughter and the sound of

distant barrel-organs. Before him, calm and cool, rose the walls

of the India Office, which in his simple way he had always con

sidered a dream in stone. Beneath his feet a whole family of ducks

circled

By Kenneth Grahame 85

circled aimlessly, with content written on every feature;or else,

reversing themselves in a position denoting supreme contempt for

all humanity above the surface, explored a new cool underworld a

few inches below. It was then (he said) that a true sense of his

situation began to steal over him; and it was then that he awoke

to the face, of another life open to him should he choose to graspit. Neither the ducks nor the India Office (so he affirmed) carried

blue pencils, and why should he ? The very next Board day he

sent in his resignation, and, with a comfortable pension and some

reminiscence (perhaps) of that frontage of the India Office, crossed

the Channel and worked South till he came to Venice, where the

last trace of blue-pencil nightmare finally faded away." And are you never bored ?

"

I tenderly inquired of him, as

we rocked homewards in a gondola between an apricot sky and an

apricot sea.

"

During the first six months Iwas," he answered, frankly ;

" then it passed away altogether, even as influenza does in time, or

the memory of a gaucherie. And now every day lasts as long as a

year of those Board days of old, and is fifty-two times as interesting.

Why, only take this afternoon, for example. I didn t get over

here till two, but first I met some newly-arrived Americans, and

talked for a cycle with them; and you never know what an

American will be surprised at, or, better still, what he will not be

surprised at ; and if you only think what that means Well,

presently they left (they had to get on to Rome), so I went up to

the platform over the sea and had oysters and a bottle of that

delightful yellow wine I always forget the name of;and aeons

passed away in the consumption. Each oyster lasted a whole Board

day, and each glass of yellow wine three. Then I strolled alongthe sands for a century or so, thinking of nothing in particular.

Lastly, I met you, and for some twelve months I ve been boringThe Yellow Book Vol. VI. F you

86 Long Odds

you with my uninteresting story. And even yet there s the

whole evening to come ! Oh, I had lots of leeway to make upwhen I came over here ; but I think I shall manage it yet in

Venice !

"

I could not help thinking, as I parted from him at the Piazzetta

steps, that (despite a certain incident in the Underground Rail

way) here was one of the sanest creatures I had ever yet happened

upon.But examples such as this (as I said) are rare ; the happy-starred

ones who know when to cut their losses. The most of us prefer

to fight on mainly, perhaps, from cowardice, and the dread of a

plunge into a new element, new conditions, new surroundings a

fiery trial for any humble, mistrustful creature of use-and-wont.

And yet it is not all merely a matter of funk. For a grim love

grows up for the sword-play itself, for the push and the hurtle of

battle, for the grips and the give-and-take in fine, for the fight itself,

whatever the cause. In this exaltation, far from ignoble, we pushand worry along until a certain day of a mist and a choke, and weare ticked off and done with.

This is the better way ;and the history of our race is ready to

justify us. With the tooth-and-claw business we began, and

we mastered it thoroughly ere we learnt any other trade. Since

that time we may have achieved a thing or two besides evolved

an art, even, here and there, though the most of us bungled it.

But from first to last fighting was the art we were alwayshandiest at ; and we are generally safe if we stick to it, what

ever the foe, whatever the weapons most of all, whatever the

cause.